
Qass. 
Book. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



EULOGY 



OP 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



BT 



HENRY CHAMPION DEMING, 



BEFORE TnE 



QENEKAL ASSEMBLY OF CONNECTICUT, 



AT 



ALLYN HALL, HARTFORD, THURSDAY, JUNE 8tli, 1865. 



r; 



HARTFORD: 

A. N. CLARK & CO., STATE PRINTERS. 

1865. 



t-4-5 



COMMITTEE ON DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



Hon. Mr. Harrison. 
Messrs. Pratt of Norwich, 
Oaklet of Bristol, 
Merritt of Greenwich, 
Payne of North Haven, 
Amsbury of Killingly, 
Hart of Cornwall, 
Hungerford of East Haddam, 
Paine of Woodstock. 

General Assembly, 

May Session, A. D. 1865. 

Resolved, That the thanks of this General Assembly are hereby 
tendered to the Hon. Henry C. Deming, for his able, eloquent 
and patriotic Address on the life and character of ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN. 

Resolved, That thirty-five hundred copies of said address be 
printed for the use of this Assembly. 

In Senate, June 9th, 1865. 
Passed. 

WM. T. ELMER, Clerk. 



House op Representatives, June 9th, 1865. 

Passed. 

JOHN R. BUCK, Clerk. 



EULOGY. 



By authority of a joint resolution, the Select Com- 
mittee on the Death of President Lincoln, invited 
the Hon. Henry Champion Deming, of Hartford, 
Member of Congress from the First District, to de- 
liver before the General Assembly a eulogy upon the 
life, character and services of the lamented Presi- 
dent. 

The invitation was accepted by the honorable 
gentleman, and the eulogy was delivered at Allyn 
Hall, in the city of Hartford, on the evening of 
June 8th, 1865. 

The Hall was festooned with flags and mourning, 
and music was furnished by Colt's Band. 

The meeting was called to order by Hon. H. 
Lynde Harrison, Senator from the Sixth District, 
who announced the following officers : 

PRESIDENT. 
His Excellency, WM. A. BUCKINGHAM. 

VICE-PRESIDENTS. 
( On the part of the Senate.) 
Hon. Roger Averill, President, Hon. Samuel Rockwell, 
" Edward I. Sandford, " Sylvester Smith, 

" Charles H. Mallory, " John T. Waite, 



G 



Hon. Benjamin Pomeroy, 
" Edwin H. Bugbee, 
" Hrnry W. Peck, 
" William E. Cone, 



Hon. Charles W. Ballard, 
" Orlando J. Hodge, 
" Bobbins BatteLl, 
" Jasper H. Bolton, 



Horn Charles A. Atkins. 



(On the part 
Hon. E. K. Foster, Speaker, 
Mr H. K. W. Weljch, 

* Franklin Chamberlin, 

" Oliver S. Williams, 

" Rial Chaney, 

" Charles W. Scott, 

" Phineas T. Barnum, 

" Samcel G. Beardsley, 

" Henry Hammond, 

" Charles Osgood, 

" Abijah Catlin, 

" Henry S. Barbour, 

" l0ther boardman, 

" George Kellogg, 



of the House.) 

Mr. Henry B. Harrison, 

" John S. Rice, 

" Harris B. Munson, 

" Frederick J. Kingsbury, 

" Samuel Mowry, 

" David P. Nichols, 

" Myron L. Mason, 

" Edward L. Ccndall, 

" David Gallup, 

" David E. Bostwick, 

" Andrew B. Mygatt, 

" William G. Coe, 

" William R. Clark, 

" Julius Converse. 



SECRETARIES, 

(On the part of the Senate.) 
Hon. Frederick W. Russell, Hon. Francis A. Sanford. 

(On the part of the House) 



Mr. Samuel J. Day, 
" " Alonzo F. Wood, 
" F. St. John Lockwood, 
" Oscar Tourtelotte, 
" George M. Woodruff, 
" John M. Douglas, 



Mr. Edward S. Scranton, 
" Albert L. Avery, 
" Apollos Comstock, 
" Lucian Carpenter, 
" Lewis Catlin, 
" George D. Hastings. 



7 

On taking the chair, Governor Buckingham was 
loudly applauded. He said : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

It is difficult for us to* review the past and con- 
template the rapid and marvelous changes which 
have crowded the events of generations into a few 
passing months, without inquiring whether it all has 
not been a dream • and yet our minds and hands 
have been so much occupied, and our hearts so 
deeply affected by the scenes through which we 
have passed, that our judgment and consciousness 
decide the question, and assure us that we have not 
been moved by visions and dreams, but by realities. 

The rebellion has been a reality. The power of 
the government has not been imaginary. The 
organization of armies, their conflict upon a thou- 
sand battle-fields, the overthrow of our national ene- 
mies, the suppression of the rebellion, and the 
emancipation of the enslaved, are all real events, 
which have surprised ourselves and astonished the 
civilized world. But events alone do not make 
history. It is read in the character and lives of 
those who have been active participators in the 
scenes which have transpired. There can be no 
correct history of the Israelites, of their oppression 
and deliverence, of their passage through the sea 
and through the wilderness, without the lives of 



Moses and Joshua. There can be no true history of 
the twenty-five years of European war, commencing 
with the French revolution and ending with the 
battle of Waterloo, without the life of Napoleon. 
Nor can there be a correct history of this nation, as 
it has passed through this great struggle for exist- 
ence, without the life of Abraham Lincoln, and with- 
out connecting his name with that immortal procla- 
mation which gave freedom and manhood to four 
millions of bondmen. 

The General Assembly has properly invited a gen- 
tleman of distinguished ability, who was intimately 
acquainted with Mr. Lincoln, to present to us this 
evening, and to weave into our nation's history, the 
life and character of our late President, so that all 
may see those qualities of heart and mind by which 
he endeared himself to the people, and which stamped 
his official acts with a purity and patriotism which 
command universal respect and admiration. No 
one can draw his character in lines of more distinct- 
ness and accuracy, or present it in more attractive 
and life-like colors, or show more clearly the precise 
influence which he exerted over public affairs during 
this period of danger, than the orator of the 
evening, whom I now introduce — the Hon. Henry 
C. Doming. 



Mr. Deraing was received with long continued 
applause. He said : 

May it please your Excellency, and Gentlemen of the 
General Assembly : — 

From the seat of our Republican Empire which, 
during the last four years and for all coming time, 
he has preserved from the spoiler by his wisdom and 
address ; through avenues of weeping myriads who 
have thronged the thoroughfare, all the way from 
the Potomac to the prairie, to look on his bier, 
bear his pall, and to scatter on his casket the fra- 
grant offerings of affection ; through great common- 
wealths which, with all the pomp and circumstance 
of mournful state, have received him on their thresh- 
old and attended him, with uncovered heads, and 
with every oblation of sorrow from border to bor- 
der ; through magnificent cities draped from cornice 
to basement in all the emblems and wailing with 
every motto and articulation of woe; to the sighing 
of the air, over the groaning earth ; to the booming 
of minute gun, to muffled drum and the plaintive 
burst of martial music ; to dirge, anthem and lamen- 
tation, Abraham Lincoln has reached that silent home 
of all the living, which " buries every error, covers 
every defect, extinguishes every resentment." 



10 

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well, 
Treason has done his worst, nor steel nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
Can touch him further ! 

With ampler honors, and with more of the sym- 
bols and ceremonial of universal love and veneration, 
than this continent ever paid before to any of her 
sons, the funeral pageant had scarcely reached the 
portals of the tomb, before the posthumous tributes 
of another Hemisphere are borne across the Ocean. 
The suffering of her eldest born fairly melts into 
sympathy the estranged heart of our haughty Island 
Mother, and England mourns, as when Nelson ex- 
pired in (he arms of victory, or as when the gates 
of her Great Abbey, closed upon the ashes of the 
greatest of her warriors. The generous Queen 
draws upon her own inconsolable domestic grief, for 
consolation to a wife and mother, like herself be- 
reaved, and pens with her own royal hand a letter of 
condolence. The brazen lips of the impassive Empe- 
ror break their grim silence to utter sententious pan- 
egyric. From the mountains of Switzerland, which 
have for centuries broken the waves of ojDpression, we 
have free, generous, intelligent homage to a libera- 
tor, whom William Tell would have been proud to 
recognize as a brother. Ancient cities, which might 
have wept, when at the base of Pompey's statue 



11 

great Csesar fell, have, by their representatives, hung 
in all the trappings of grief the august Hall, wherein 
they are now legislating for regenerated Italy. The 
free towns and corporate guilds of Netherlands and 
Germany, which wrung their charters from Charles 
the Bold, and rocked European freedom in its cradle, 
vie with each other in canonizing a child of the 
people, who leads the Great Republic from darkness 
and bondage, to light and liberty. The Prussian 
Chamber of Deputies, receive with enthusiastic 
applause, the eloquent eulogium of a personal ac- 
quaintance of the President, and affirm a most ear- 
nest resolution of respect by unanimously rising 
from their seats, in token of superlative courtesy, 
and the Lower House of the Austrian Reichsrath 
which conducts its stately proceedings, according to 
forms and usages handed down from the Feudal 
Ages, is as wild and demonstrative, upon the receipt 
of the sad intelligence, as an Indignation Meeting of 
Loyal Leagues in Union Square. Indeed, for Abra- 
ham Lincoln one cry of universal regret is raised all 
over the civilized earth. 

It is difficult to descend from the fervor of these 
first impassioned outbursts of a world wide grief, to 
cool analysis and historic delineation. And yet that 
is the task before me. I should violate the proprie- 
ties of this occasion, if I indulged in mere rhapsodies, 



12 

however grand and well deserved, for I am to pre- 
sent an estimate of character to a Legislative body, 
and I can not forget that it habitually dwells in the 
mild atmosphere congenial to deliberation, that it 
solicits unvarnished statement instead of rhetorical 
flourish, and records its own judgment in the com- 
posed style of fact and argument. 

In these days of photographs, it is almost super- 
fluous to paint in speech the portrait of a distin- 
guished man, but as the resources of the language 
have been exhausted in depreciation of Mr. Lincoln's 
person, I am unwilling that he shall pass into his- 
tory, in any shape, which may repel the enthusiasm 
due by posterity, to exalted merit and heroic achieve- 
ment. Let us at all events place on record the im- 
age which lie really wore that he may not descend 
the ages according to malicious caricature. Mr. 
Lincoln's person was not one to move their applause, 
to whom an Apollo or an Antinous are the only 
ideals of physical humanity, or whose undeviating 
types of manliness are found on the canvas of a 
Reynolds or a Stuart, but it was not uninteresting 
for those to contemplate who regard the human form 
and face, as a veritable record of life's experiences, 
and to some extent, an index of. character. It was 
not unsuited to one who was born from a rude stock, 
in a wild forest, and was nurtured and moulded by 



13 

constant warfare, with wilderness life, and iron for- 
tune, and frontier hardships. Conceive a tall and 
gaunt figure, more than six feet in height, not only 
unencumbered with superfluous flesh, but reduced 
to the minimum working standard of cord, and sinew, 
and muscle, strong and indurated by exposure and 
toil, with legs and arms long and attenuated, but 
not disproportionately so to the long and attenuated 
trunk ; in posture and carriage not ungraceful, but 
with the grace of unstudied and careless ease, rather 
than of cultivated airs and high-bred pretensions. 
His dress is uniformly of black throughout, and 
would attract but little attention in a well dressed 
circle, if it hung less loosely upon him and the 
ample white shirt collar was not turned over his 
cravat in the western style. The face that sur- 
mounts this figure is half Roman and half Indian, 
bronzed by climate, furrowed by life struggles, 
seamed with humor, the head is massive and covered 
with dark, thick and unmanageable hair, the brow 
is wide and well developed, the nose large and 
fleshy, the lips full, cheeks thin, and drawn down in 
strong corded lines, which, but for the w r iry whiskers, 
would disclose the machinery which moves the broad 
jaw. The eyes are dark gray, sunk in deep sockets, 
but bright, soft and beautiful in expression, and 
sometimes lost and half abstracted, as if their glance 



14 

was reversed and turued inward, or as if the soul 
which lighted them was far away. The teeth are 
white and regular, and it is only when a smile, radi- 
ant, captivating and winning as was ever given to 
mortal, transfigures the plain countenance, that you 
begin to realize that it is not impossible for artists to 
admire and woman to love it. 

As the world has rung with ridicule of the ungain- 
liness of his manners, I may be permitted to say, that 
without any pretensions to superfine polish, they 
were frank, cordial, and dignified, without rudeness, 
without offence, and without any violation of the 
proprieties and etiquettes of his high position. As 
fastidious and keen a master of such nice matters as 
Mr. Everett has said, "I recognize in the President, a 
full measure of the qualities which entitle him to the 
personal respect of the people. On the only social 
occasion on which I ever had the honor to be in his 
company, viz: the Commemoration at Gettysburg, 
he sat at the table at the house of my friend David 
Willis, Esq., by the side of several distinguished per- 
sons, ladies and gentlemen, foreigners and Americans, 
among them the French Minister at Washington, 
since appointed French Ambassador at Madrid, and 
the Admiral of the French Fleet, and that in gentle- 
manly appearance, manners and conversation he was 
the peer of any man at the table." 



15 

To borrow one of his own conversational phrases 
he clid'nt brag on deportment. He was not a Tur- 
veydrop or Sir Harcourt Courtly or General Banks. 
It would have puzzled him to stand in tableau for the 
Earl of Chatham, or the Pompeian Ajax. He was 
not proud of his leg, like President Dwight, nor was 
he a George the Fourth at a bow. He stood, and 
moved, and bowed, without affectation, and without 
obtrusive awkwardness, pretty much as nature 
prompted, and as if he regarded carriage as about as 
bad a criterion as color of genuine nobility of soul. 
He was not overcareful of his dignity, feeling assured 
that his dignity could take care of itself, and consent- 
ing to rend the web of official formalities, and to 
waive all ceremony and precedence which might bar 
his passage to a good deed by the most expeditious 
route. He has been convicted in contempt of " the 
divinity which cloth hedge a king," of conferring with 
his counsellors in a great emergency, and of perform- 
ing an act of kindness and mercy, enveloped in no 
robe of state but a cotton nightgown of scanty pat- 
tern, and on one memorable occasion he even pre- 
sumed to solve an enigma, raised in a congress of 
ambassadors, by the little story of " root hog or die." 
He was what Dr. Johnson calls a thoroughly '-'club- 
bable" man, eminently social and familiar ; in private 
interviews and sometimes in public, overflowing with 



16 

illustrations of every theme, always apt and racy, 
and frequently humorous, with a habit like the Doc- 
tor himself, of upsetting a pedantry or a sophism by 
an epigram or an anecdote, and with a story telling 
method of reasoning like our own Doctor Franklin. 
While unrivaled as a raconteur in the pith and variety 
of his store, he was not half so broad in his narratives 
as many an assuming Chesterfield on both sides of 
the water. J It is the weak invention of false friends 
and open enemies, to lay at his door all the prurient 
jokes which their foul imaginations conceived and to 
falsely asseverate that he was in the habit of indulg- 
ing in unseemly jest and repartee on grave and sol- 
emn occasions. I can adopt and endorse the precise 
language of Mr. F. B. Carpenter, who as an artist had 
free access to Mr. Lincoln's presence, and was for 
several months an inmate of the White House, when 
he says, " I feel that it is due to Mr. Lincoln's mem- 
ory to state, that during my residence in Washing- 
ton, after witnessing his intercourse with all classes 
of people, including Governors, Senators, Members 
of Congress, Officers of the Army and familiar friends, 
I can not recollect to have heard him relate a cir- 
cumstance to any one of them all that would have 
been out of place if uttered in a lady's drawing voomj 
I am aware that a different impression may prevail, 
founded it may be in some instances on facts, but 



17 

where there is one fact of the kind, I am persuaded 
that there are forty falsehoods at least." 

Of his intellectual capacity, Mr. Lincoln gave the 
most signal proof, in that memorable contest with 
Judge Douglas, and his speeches are in no sense infe- 
rior to his rivals — the Charles James Fox of our forum, 
by universal consent the most athletic and expert oft- 
hand debater who ever graced the United States 
Senate. The President's mind was so original and 
self dependent, so unwilling to borrow knowledge 
and opinion, that he fairly scorned all adventitious 
support and external auxiliaries. No President ever 
leaned so lightly upon his Cabinet. No man repro- 
duces less in official documents, the argument and 
thought which he imbibes at consultations, and it is 
a marvelous fact that no sentence is to be found in 
any of his state papers, which suggests the suspicion 
of any other impress but that of his own mint, or 
where he attempts to strengthen or vindicate a posi- 
tion, by quoting from any book or citing any author- 
ity. And his greatness, his greatness! is the most 
original and bizarre in the world's history, shaped 
after no model, suggesting as a compact whole no 
pattern, no parallel — not even a resemblance, con- 
travening every antique and modern standard of 
Hero-worship, — a greatness which admits of no exact 
analysis and can only be loosely described as com- 



18 

posed of great simplicity, great naturalness, great 
bonhomie, great shrewdness, great strength, great 
devotion, great equanimity, and great success, on the 
greatest theatre ever offered to such qualities for 
exhibition. He appears like an erratic streaming 
comet amid the fixed orbs of greatness, a fiery 
meteor plunging and howling through their subdued 
and chastened atmosphere. Ennobled by no patent 
but that of nature, with no diploma but his record; 
crowned, as it were, with the wild flowers of the 
forest and with all its flavor and freshness upon him, 
he walks into the surprised Pantheon of the world's 
great men, a huge, grotesque Backwoodsman, but 
with credentials to admission which can not be chal- 
lenged or disallowed ; like the hirsute and half naked 
Brennus striding into the grave and reverend deco- 
rums of a Roman Senate; like Hans Luther's plebeian 
and beetle-browed son confronting the stoled, mitered 
and ermined Diet of Charles the Fifth ; like a red- 
nosed, cropped and mail-clad Cromwell shuffling 
through the silken splendors, the Vandyke dresses, 
the perfumed love-locks, and the fastidious etiquette 
of outraged Whitehall ; like St. Artegans' iron soldier 
inarching, with his invincible flail, into the startled 
and shrinking ranks of vulnerable and pain suffering 
warriors. It may be said of him, as has been said of 
another indigenous American type of manliness, that 



19 

he taught the world " a new idea of greatness." It 
is somewhat surprising that with all his superabun- 
dance of wit and humor, he was but frugally endowed 
with imagination and fancy, without wing for the air, 
with not even enough like the ostrich to aid him 
along the earth. He never uses a figure of speech to 
decorate or enliven his style, and but seldom for the 
purpose of illustrating a thought or exposing a fallacy- 
He contemned all the elegancies of diction, using 
only plain homespun English, aiming at direct and 
compact statement in the fewest words, and those 
sometimes chosen with more respect to convenience 
than precision. 

His education was self-acquired and unpretending 
and, in the department of History, wherein the Past 
by experience and example instructs and exhorts 
the Present, and therefore so essential to genuine 
statesmanship, it was somewhat narrow and defect- 
ive. It must be constantly borne in mind, that a 
superlative kindness and a disposition to oblige every 
body, were fairly autocratic in him, sometimes hold- 
ing in complete subjection all the other powers and 
forces of his nature, and frequently controlling, against 
their protest, his opinions and actions. "I have never 
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom," is the 
accurate description which he gives of himself. The 
domination of this amiable disposition must be con- 



20 

stantly remembered, and carried along with you into 
the development and estimate of his public career, 
which I am attempting to present. 

The chief mental equipments which he brought to 
the mighty task before him, were that downright 
uncompromising common sense which seems to divine 
its way through the most intricate problems, a keen 
insight into human nature, an intimate acquaintance 
with the spasmodic movements of the American 
mind, a natural aptitude, improved by professional 
discipline, in chaining premise to conclusion, and in 
detecting the occult relations of political cause to 
political effect, great caution in forming opinions, 
honesty and sincerity of purpose, inflexible persist- 
ence in what he regarded as public duty, and a con- 
scientious sense of his responsibility to the country 
and to mankind. He had a temper habitually cheer- 
ful, but not, as some have falsely assumed, inflexibly 
so, for in my brief acquaintance with it, I have seen 
it wear every shade from exultation to despair. 
Laughter in abundance was in him but tears were 
also there. To these characteristics should always 
be added, an intuitive comprehension of the j>recise 
line which divides Right from Wrong, and implicit 
reliance upon the goodness and wisdom of Almighty 
God. 

Let us now see how this peculiar organization 



21 

addressed itself to the tremendous task which he has 
just triumphantly achieved. And what a creative 
task it was ? Armies, navies, cash, credit, opinion, all 
to be created, heroism to be evolved from money- 
making thrift, pluck from pusilanimity, steadfast 
principle from vacillating expediency, constancy and 
endurance from over-sanguine and vain-glorious 
dreams — and millions of self-willed and arrogant 
despots to be humbled forever. He began by almost 
re-creating himself. 

In one of the brief speeches which Abraham Lin- 
coln made, when as President elect, and in -the full 
flush of life, he traveled the same road upon which 
he has recently returned, in the habiliments of the 
grave, he says to his countrymen: "In my view of 
the present aspect of affairs, there need be no blood- 
shed or war. There is no necessity for it. I am not 
in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance 
that there will be no bloodshed unless it be forced 
upon the government, and then it will be compelled 
to act in self-defence." This brief sentence furnishes 
us with the first insight into his mind, when contem- 
plating the task before him, and it unlocks all the 
mystery and explains the purely defensive course of 
his administration, during the first two months of its 
existence. 

At the same time Jefferson Davis, on his progress 



22 

to Montgomery, to install a hostile government, thus 
proclaims his setiments: — " The time for compromise 
has passed, and we are . now determined to maintain 
our position, and make all who oppose us smell 
southern gunpowder and feel southern steel." And 
this short utterance epitomizes the spirit and temper 
of the Chief Conspirator, when he was commencing 
the despotic reign which has just been so ignomini- 
ously closed by Col. Pritchard at Irwinsville. By the 
light of events we now learn, what was not surmised 
by the most sagacious at the time, that the Rebellion 
was all armed, equipped, in line of battle and thirst- 
ing for the sanguinary fray, before the future Con- 
queror of the Rebellion had convinced himself that 
any blood would be shed, or had systematisecl any 
plan of counteracting the revolutionary agencies, 
which were threatening his own and the nation's 
life. So far, however, from regarding the hesitancy 
of the President at the outset, to avow any radical 
or even any methodized policy, of dealing with the 
rebellion, as proof of imbecility, I accept it as conclu- 
sive evidence of genuine greatness and strength. 
He was ignorant of its implacable determination 
like every other man guileless of complicity with it, 
and a premature radical policy would have subjected 
him instantly, to the reproach from a vast majority 
of his countrymen, of stimulating an undeveloped 



23 

and embryo crime, which conciliation and caution 
might strangle ; and any policy, while the insurrec- 
tion was unorganized, would have clearly convicted 
him of the hollowness and insincerity of the mere 
pretender. It would have implied superhuman pre- 
vision, sublime conceit, or arrant quackery. He was 
about assuming the helm of Government, when the 
tempest was abroad in its fury, when every headland 
was buried in storm and darkness, when every Pha- 
ros as well as the eternal lights of Heaven were 
extinguished, when the needle was no longer true to 
the pole, when all prognostics failed, when all charts 
and tables of previous navigators were at fault, and 
the laboring ship must be steered over the wide and 
pathless ocean by conjecture alone. This was no 
time for laying out her bearings and course for a 
four years' voyage, and our wise and truthful Pilot, 
avowing manfully his infirmity, in such an unparal- 
leled tornado, and reverently invoking divine guid- 
ance, prudently abstained, during that memorable 
progress, from committing himself to any rigid and 
inflexible theory, which would prevent him after- 
wards, from adapting his measures to the growth and 
development of the monstrous anomaly, and of justi- 
fying his policy by its frighful vicissitudes and crime. 
Nor is the language of his Inaugural much more 
decisive. His temper and spirit towards it is most 



24 

forbearing and admirable. He is not yet authorized 
to treat it as a maniac, and therefore addresses it as 
a perverse but accountable creature. So far as the 
Rebellion had evinced its character and intentions, 
just so far his plan of dealing with it was therein 
frankly and unmistakably announced. It undertook 
to vindicate its revolutionary attitude, by pretending 
to fear an unauthorized destruction of Slavery in the 
States, and the new President, as in duty bound, in 
his first official address disclaimed for himself and 
his supporters any such purpose, both by a full and 
pointed denial, and by ample citation of the antece- 
dent and recorded declarations of the Republican 
party and its Chief. In prosecution of its purposes 
the rebellion had already seized Forts, Navy Yards, 
Custom Houses, Arsenals, and had prohibited the 
collection of duties, and he calmly but decisively 
declares, that " the power confided to him will be 
used, to hold, occupy and possess the property 
and places belonging to the Government, and to 
collect the duties and imports." And that this 
might not seem too threatening a declaration, he 
adds the important qualification, that " beyond 
what may be necessary for these objects, there 
will be no invasion, no using of force against or 
among the people anywhere." In deference to the 
irritation which prevailed in the insurrectionary 



25 

States, he expressly foregoes the right of appointing 
obnoxious strangers to Federal offices within their 
limits, and promises that the mails shall be furnished 
to all parts of the Union, until they are violently 
repelled. 

In this brief statement, I have condensed all the 
foreshadowings of a policy, which this wise and 
unfaltering Pkesident vouchsafed to the world, when 
consciously entering upon the most perilous era of 
our history, and assuming the most momentous 
responsibilities. While we have in it but one sen- 
tence, which even the over-sensitive chivalry could 
construe into a menace, we are prodigally furnished 
with conciliatory promises, and with such winning 
arguments and admonitions only, as a tender father 
might employ with a wayward offspring. Up to the 
time when he took the oath of office upon the east- 
ern portico of the Capitol, he had pushed forbear- 
ance beyond the point where it ceases to be a virtue, 
and it is perfectly apparent that it had not yet 
dawned upon him, that his hand was soon to wield 
a scourge, terrible enough to chastise two God-defy- 
ing centuries of crime, or that his chief mission to 
this earth was to conduct a nation through the jaws 
of death and the gates of hell, to regenerated and 
immortal life. 

Let me now attempt to ascertain, at what precise 



26 

period he abandoned this preconceived and cherished 
idea of compromising the embroilment by a mere 
warlike demonstration, and let me also attempt to 
analyze the difficulties, which, a resolution in favor of 
uncompromising and aggressive hostilities, encounters 
from his conservative habits, from his peculiar emo- 
tional and intellectual organization, and reproduce, 
as far as I am able, the arguments, which persuaded 
his placable and scrupulous mind to the unhesitating 
and implacable purpose of exercising all the tre- 
mendous powers conferred upon him by the Rights 
of War, and of grasping every weapon in its terrible 
arsenal. 

The Time, when this decided change in his pur- 
pose first appears, was more than a month after our 
flag was struck from Sumpter's crumbling battle- 
ments, more than a month after that bugle blast 
which summoned seventy-five thousand men to arms, 
a month at least after the bloody baptism of Massa- 
chusetts troops in the streets of Baltimore. We have 
his own authentic manifestoes to demonstrate, that 
as late as the first of May, 1861, he had not aban- 
doned temporizing expedients, and we learn by 
evidence equally conclusive, that before the month 
had closed, he had finally resolved to turn upon the 
inveterate Rebellion the unbridled wrath of War. 
The hour, when doubt and hesitancy first yielded to 



27 

the stern command of remorseless duty, must have 
been the soberest, saddest, solemnest of his faithful 
life, not from doubt of the result, though that was 
sufficiently perplexing; not from fear of the conse. 
quences, though these were appalling enough ; not 
from the weight of responsibility, though that might 
have staggered the most unyielding determination, 
but it was sad and solemn, because Abraham Lincoln, 
above and beyond all other men, loved Peace and 
hated War; because seiges, battles, strife, swords, 
bayonets, rifles, cannon, all the paraphernalia and 
instruments of brute force, were abhorrent to his 
enlightened and benevolent nature. Shall we raise 
the latch, and enter in to the secret chamber of that 
capacious and genial soul, when this fell resolve was 
first reached, when the frightful vision of War, in all 
its terrors clad, supplants there the hope of concilia- 
tion and the dream of peace ? I speak, what I heard 
from his own lips when I say, that it was reached 
after sleepless nights, after a severe conflict with 
himself, and with extreme reluctance. By a strange 
and cruel freak of fate, the duty of waging the 
bloodiest war in history was imposed upon the most 
peace loving and amiable ruler in all time, upon a 
man whose maxim was (in the language of one of 
his favorite texts,) " let the potsherd strive with the 
potsherds of the Earth" — and into wdiose mind, had 






28 

been thoroughly ingrained that traditional notion of 
our politics, that the first drop of blood, shed in a 
sectional strife, was the death-knell of the American 
Union, 

Let us enter in, where that now disembodied spirit 
was, in the recesses of its clay tenement, in stormy 
debate with itself. What throes, what agony do we 
witness! What heart rending sobs, what heaven 
piercing prayers that the cup may pass from his lips ! 
Here was that conservative mind, trained to habits of 
professional caution, with the strongest bias towards 
legality and moderation, which had uniformly steered 
itself by the certain lights of jurisprudence, which 
had invoked no remedies but the peaceful ones of 
the Courts, the Constitution and the Law, which had 
never combated Error but with reason and persua- 
sion alone, and had abjured the ordeal of battle and 
the arbitrament of force, as obsolete and heathenish 
enormities. Here are all these mature, earnest opin- 
ions and prepossessions, all dominant from fifty years 
of undisputed sway, w T restling impotently with the 
War ideas and the overmastering War Revelation of 
yesterday. What an unwelcome intruder the con- 
viction is to the serene virtues, which had hitherto 
exclusively occupied this holy sanctuary. Domesti- 
cated here are Justice and Mercy, ("and earthly 
power is likest God's when Mercy seasons Justice.") 



29 

Jus! ice and Mercy, which hold the balances quite 
evenly, but the hair's weight which oscillates them, 
uniformly found in Mercy's scale, and how repulsive 
it is to these righteous and discriminating attributes, 
to let loose upon the people a wild and furious 
Avenger that devours alike innocence and guilt? 
Here too dwell sensibilities and affections so acute, 
that they fling wide open the doors of the soul to 
every one who approaches in Misfortune's name, 
grant the prayer of Sorrow before it is half uttered, 
and which the small inarticulate wail of infancy 
instantly melts into tears of most compassionate ten- 
derness; how are these sensitive fibers wrung and 
tortured when it suddenly flashes upon them, that 
the loving hand which has only learned to soothe 
and relieve the miserable, is commissioned by inex- 
orable fate, to break the fourth seal of the Apoca- 
lypse, and, et behold a pale horse ! and his name who 
sat on him was Death and Hell followed him; and 
power was given unto them over the fourth part of 
the earth, to kill with the sword and with hunger 
and with Death and with the beasts of the earth." 
Movelessly, movelessly rooted also in this great heart, 
is a superfine sense of humor, craving hilarity and 
harmless mirth, and joy-inspiring wit and anecdote, 
as the only effectual relief to an over anxious spirit 
and an over-tasked brain, and how reluctantly does 



30 

this part of his nature admit to close companionship, 
the gloomy forebodings, the bitter memories, the 
dreadful uncertainties, the everlasting shrieks, dirges, 
vengeful tragedies, and heart-rending atrocities of 
War. 

In addition to the protest of these conservative 
habits, and amiable emotions, upon his adoption of 
any radical and thorough-going policy of grappling 
with the Rebellion, he was also, like many others, 
held back for a season, by the legal scruples which 
his reflecting faculties were constantly suggesting. 
" Beset," as it has been well said, "by fanatics of prin- 
ciple, on one side, who would give no heed to the 
limitations of his written authority, and by fanatics 
of party, on the other, who were not only deaf to the 
obligations of justice, but would hear of no policy 
large enough for a revolutionary emergency, Mr. 
Lincoln never forgot, for an instant, that he was a 
constitutional ruler." The Constitution of the United 
States which it takes but twenty minutes to read, can 
be studied for twice twenty years, without exhaust- 
ing its meaning, or comprehending its vast treasury 
of express and implied power. Like most of our 
statesmen the attention of the President, had been 
exclusively turned to the Peace side of the instru- 
ment, to the provisions which address themselves to 
conditions of unbroken amity, domestic tranquility, 



31 



to the preservation of amicable relations between the 
States, and to the development, under their auspices, 
of commerce, industry, manufactures and trade. 
The powers it grants over internal improvements, 
over foreign and inter-State commerce, currency, 
duties and imposts, territories, naturalization, taxation, 
bankruptcy, as well as the extent of constitutional 
limitations upon the General Government, and of 
constitutional prohibitions upon the States, have not 
only been subjects of constant individual study, but 
have been illustrated and defined, by a long, lumin- 
ous and comprehensive series of judicial determina- 
tions, which have the same authority and validity as 
if they were incorporated into the Constitution itself. 
We can all see, at a glance, how greatly these inves- 
tigations and decisions have contributed to consoli- 
date the Union and to enlarge and strengthen the 
influence of the National government. But Courts 
and individuals have alike ignored the War side of 
the Constitution, or drawn but feebly upon that 
slumbering element in our system, which holds each 
revolving planet in complete subjection to the sun. 

What are its powers over States which abjure 
allegiance, and conspire together for its destruction 
and overthrow, and raise armies, and wage War 
against it, was, fortunately, a question which no 
judicial tribunal had been called upon to adjudi- 



32 

cate, which no curious theorizer had even mooted? 
and which Mr. Lincoln himself for the first time 
investigated in the third month of his administration 
— that parturiant and groaning May. He then con- 
centrated his attention upon the War powers of our 
organic law, and found in this terra incognita, unex- 
pected resources which never yet had contributed 
to the weight, and vigor, and terror of the Federal 
arm. The elements of strength and power which 
were hid away, in the weighty clauses, which give 
to the President and Congress the issues of Peace 
and War, were dragged to light and employed for 
the salvation of the Republic. 

By the middle of May the doubt and haze which 
had settled upon the legal relation of the Insurgent 
States to the Government, began to disappear. On 
the sixth of that month, the Confederate Congress 
at Montgomery, declared war against the United 
States, and Mr. Lincoln's position, at this time, 
towards the gigantic peril which threatened our 
national existence, was described with legal exact- 
ness and accuracy, when it was said to him by an 
eminent civilian — " If the whole unvarnished truth 
is told you, sir, you are confronted by a de facto 
Rebellion, and a de jaclo War, and you are justified 
in treating it as the one, as the other, and as both." 
With equal truth it was shortly afterwards said, iri 
the United States Senate, " it is a Rebellion swollen 



33 

to the proportions of a War, and it is a War deriving 
its life from Rebellion. It is no less of a Rebellion 
because of its full blown grandeur, nor is it less a 
War because of the traitorous source from whence 
it draws its life." What are my constitutional 
resources against this new, strange, and double 
headed monster ? was the first question which Mr. 
Lincoln put to himself, and this question, grave, 
severe, and momentous as was ever submitted to 
human arbitrament, he was called upon, without 
precedent, without authority, and from his habits of 
mind without assistance, forthwith to determine by 
his peculiar process of divination. 

The Constitution, does it not? establishes in law 
and in fact, an independent government. By that 
act alone, all the belligerent rights, which from time 
immemorial, by international law belong to inde- 
pendent governments, were instantly conveyed to 
the new born nation. Yes, yes, they were all ours 
by the title which secured us a place in the family 
of nations. In abeyance during peace, they instantly 
vest with the first act of War, and with full grown 
vehemence and power surrender themselves to 
execute our behests, against all of our public ene- 
mies whether they rally under the bastard banner of 
an Insurgent State, or the legitimate Hag of a 
recognized nation. 



34 

But not only did Mr. Lincoln find full belligerent 
rights, according to the laws and usages of nations, 
and against all armed foes, implied in the independ- 
ent government which the Constitution creates and 
endows with the powers of self-defence, but he found, 
also, that they all directly and necessarily flow from 
the express provisions of the instrument. What is 
War? oh doubting Didymus ! According to the 
books, it is "contention by force for the purpose of par- 
alyzing an enemy." Congress has power, has it not? 
"to declare war," and what is this but lifting the 
gate and opening the sluiceway which sets in motion 
all the legitimate machinery which is required to 
paralyze an enemy? Congress has power, has it 
not ? " to grant letters of marque and reprisal "; and 
what is this but commissioning two of the peculiar 
agencies of war, to follow the property of the enemy 
wherever it flees, for the purpose of punishing and 
impoverishing him. Congress has power " to make 
rules concerning captures on land and water," and 
what is this but providing. directly for the exercise 
of seizure, forfeiture, contribution, confiscation, liber- 
ation. In the power conferred upon Congress, " to 
raise and support armies," "to provide and maintain 
a navy," " to make rules for the government of the 
land and naval forces," "to provide for the calling 
forth of the militia, to execute the laws of the Union, 



. 



35 

suppress insurrection and repel invasions," and, in 
the clinching and decisive clause which empowers it 
" to make all laws necessary and proper" for carry- 
ing these enumerated powers into execution, he 
found plenary authority for employing, in its ex- 
tremest rigor, every right of war against rebels in 
arms. 

Turning away then, from the pages of the Consti- 
tution which confer belligerent rights, he reperused the 
article which deals with Rebellion as a crime, and 
provides for it a criminal punishment, to be enforced 
in the Courts, by the peaceful processes of the munici- 
pal law; and he finds that levying war against the 
United States and adhering to their enemies is trea- 
son, and is liable to all the pains, penalties and for- 
feitures which are visited upon that crime. 

From this long review, Mr. Lincoln rose with the 
conviction, that for the overthrow of the rebels he 
might draw upon two fountains, and a double source 
of power, the Constitution and the rights of tvar ; that 
as criminals he might pursue them by the slow and 
guarded processes of the first, but that as enemies, he 
could wither them with all the dread agencies and 
summary vengeance of the last, and he rose, too, 
with the full determination from which he never 
afterwards deflected, to draw upon both magazines, 
to fight from both batteries, and with all their thunder. 



36 

The powers thus claimed, are all indubitably con- 
ferred, and may be all unquestionably used, unless 
in behalf of rebels in arms, you urge the preposter- 
ous plea that they are not enemies because they are 
traitors, thereby constituting broken faith, violated 
oaths, and avowed treason, titles to immunity 
from the penalties of war, and thus disfranchise an 
independent nation of every belligerent right against 
those foes, who have once owed it allegiance, and to 
the guilt of treason have added that of unjust war. 
If, in addition to the considerations I have urged 
in favor of these positions, time would permit me to 
cite the judgments of the Supreme Court, I could 
present precise points, raised in admiralty appeals, 
and ruled by such judges as Marshall, Livingstone, 
Tilghman, Taney, Grier and Nelson, which establish 
the principle, that the United States engaged in sup- 
pressing an insurrection of its citizens, may with 
entire consistency treat them as criminals, as enemies, 
and as both, and may, with equal consistency, also 
act in the two-fold capacity of sovereign and belligerent, 
according to the several measures resorted to for the 
accomplishment of its purpose. By inflicting, through 
its agent the Judiciary, the penalty which the law 
affixes to the capital crimes of treason and piracy, it 
treats them as criminals, and acts in its capacity as a 
sovereign, and its courts are but enforcing its municipal 



37 

regulations. By instituting a blockade of the ports 
of its rebellious citizens, invading their territory, 
sequestrating their property, and emancipating their 
slaves, the Government treats them as enemies, and 
exercises its rights as a belligerent, and its courts, in 
their adjudication upon capture, seizures, and forfeit- 
ures, are organized as courts of prize, under the law 
of nations.* 

I have dwelt longer, than may be deemed judi- 
cious by some, upon the process by which Abraham 
Lincoln's mind was gradually led, from vague and 
undefined notions, to defined and accurate views of 
the relations of the armed insurgent to the Federal 
Government, because it lies at the very root of his 
Administration of the War, because it vindicates his 
Constitutional fidelity, because, just as the future 
forest once lay in the acorn's cup, just as the full 
grown Rebellion once lay, in the pestilent heresy of 
Calhoun, just so clearly and conspicuously its inevit- 
able death lay, in the fundamental and germinant 
idea, that as criminals they were subject to all the 
penalties of the Constitution, and as enemies to all the 
legal consequences of War. 

In that classic drama, which first revealed to the 
world the masterly genius of Talford, unhappy Ion 

* Upton's Maritime Warfare and Erize, p. 212. 



38 

proceeds upon the task, to which he was called by 
the audible voice of the gods, with a firm hand and 
unfaltering will, but- with supreme pity and tender- 
ness towards the father he was doomed to slay. 
With as compassionate a heart, with as complete 
exemption from all vengeful passions, but with as 
unswerving and constant a determination, this gentle 
President now dedicates his arm to the destruction of 
the Rebellion. And from this time forward all vas- 
cillation, compunction, and even debate, apparently 
disappear from his mind, as if he had accepted and 
surrendered himself to a vengeful destiny, or as if he 
regarded himself as the mere instrument of working 
out a great cause, which he was constrained to recog- 
nize, but powerless to control. Forthwith, rise like 
exhalations that impregnable cordon of earthworks 
in which Washington has securely reposed, forthwith 
the guns of Fort McHenry, and the broadside of a 
man of war admonish the Plug Uglies of Baltimore, 
that the main thoroughfare to the Capital must here- 
after be inviolate, forthwith the Ohio contingent is 
ordered to sweep every hostile banner from the 
mountain fastnesses of West Virginia, forthwith But- 
ler, from Fortress Monroe, hurls a forlorn hope against 
the counterscarps of Big Bethel, forthwith the tented 
villages disappear, like snow flakes, from the sur- 
rounding fields of the Metropolis, and the rumbling 



39 

of artillery waggons upon every bridge, and the long 
lines of glittering bayonets which reflect the waters 
of the Potomac, proclaim that the Rubicon is passed, 
and the sacred soil invaded, forthwith, in his first 
message, he informs Congress, that " he has invoked 
the War power," and calls for four hundred thousand 
men and four hundred millions of dollars, that "the 
conflict may be short and decisive," and wjien it 
passes the Non-Intercourse Act, the Confiscation Act, 
the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, they are forth- 
with approved, for in determining that the Govern- 
ment was endowed, in time of War, with unabridged 
belligerent rights, he had settled a principle which 
underlies all these controverted measures. 

In the seven months which follow, he evinces an 
administrative vigor that would have satisfied Napo- 
leon the Great, but it was all alas ! counteracted, by 
a military imbecility in his Generals that was fairly 
sublime. It is the era of almost unrelieved disaster, 
commencing with the ineffaceable disgrace of Bull 
Run and terminating only with the capture of Fort 
Donelson, which first introduced to the country an 
immortal name, and initiated a career which has 
steadily marched on from victory to victory, and 
from Alp to Alp, up to the crowning summit of mili- 
tary grandeur, where Ulysses S. Grant now stands 
unchallenged and secure. 



40 

How nobly the President bore himself, during this 
interval of darkness that could' be felt, when bold 
men trembled at every click of the telegraph, let 
two tributes offered by unfriendly voices to his Stoi- 
cism attest : the first, is from no less a master of it 
thanj Napoleon the Third, who epigramatically says: 
"Mr. Lincoln's highest claim upon my admiration, is 
a Roman equanimity, which has been tried by both 
extremes of fortune and disturbed by neither;" the 
second, is from a hostile Englishman who says, that 
"tried by years of failure, without achieving one 
great success, he- not only never yielded to despond- 
ency or anger, but what is most marvellous, con- 
tinually grew in self-possession and magnanimity." | 
I once myself ventured to ask the President, if he 
had ever despaired of the country ? and he told me, 
that "when the Peninsular Campaign terminated 
suddenly at Harrison's Landing, I was as nearly 
inconsolable as I could be and live." In the same 
connection I inquired, if there had ever been a 
period in which he thought that better management, 
upon the part of his Commanding General, might 
have terminated the War? and he answered that 
there were three, that the first was at Malvern Hill, 
where McClellan failed to command an immediate 
advance upon Richmond, that the second was at 
Chancellorville, where Hooker failed to reinforce 



41 

Sedgwick, after hearing his cannon upon the extreme 
right, and that the third was after Lee's retreat from 
Gettysburg, when Meade failed to attack him in the 
bend of the Potomac. After this commentary I 
waited for an outburst of denunciation, for a criti- 
cism at least upon the delinquent officers, but I 
waited in vain ; so far from a word of censure 
escaping his lips, he soon added, that his first remark 
might not appear uncharitable, "I do not know that 
I could have given different orders had I been with 
them myself; I have not fully made up my mind 
how I should behave, when minnie balls were whist- 
ling and these great oblong shells shrinking in my 
ear. I might run away." The interview, which I 
am recalling, was last summer, just after Gen. Fre- 
mont had declined to run against him for the Presi- 
dency. The magnificent Bible, which the negroes 
of • Washington had just presented him, lay upon the 
table, and while we were both examining it, I recited 
the somewhat remarkable passage from the Chroni- 
cles; "Eastward were six Levites, northward four a 
day, southward four a day and towards Assuppim 
two. and two, at Parbar westward, four at the cause- 
way and two at Parbar." He immediately chal- 
lenged me to find any such passage as that in Jus 
Bible. After I had pointed it out to him, and he 
was satisfied of its genuineness, he asked me if I 



42 

remembered the text which his friends had recently 
applied to Fremont, and instantly turned to a verse 
in the first of Samuel, put on his spectacles, and read 
in his slow, peculiar and waggish tone, — "And every 
one that was in distress, and every one that was in 
debt, and every one that was discontented gathered 
themselves unto him ; and he became a Captain over 
them : and there were with him about four hundred 
men." I am here reminded of an impressive remark, 
which he made to me upon another occasion and 
which I shall never forget. He said, he had never 
united himself to any church, because he found diffi- 
culty in giving his assent, without mental reserva- 
tion, to the long complicated statements of Christian 
doctrine, which characterize their Articles of belief 
and Confessions of Faith. " When any church," he 
continued, "will inscribe over its altar, as its sole 
qualification for membership the Saviour's condensed 
statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, 
'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
and thy neighbor as thyself/ that church will I join 
with all my heart and all my soul." The books 
which he chiefly read, in his leisure hours were, the 
Bible, Shakspeare, the peasant poet of Scotland, with 
whom his sympathies were very acute, and those 
peculiar off-shoots of American wit, of which Orpheus 



43 

C. Kerr, Artemas Ward, and Doesticks are types. 
I frequently saw all these books in his hands, during 
a voyage of three clays upon the Potomac, when (he 
party consisted only of the President and his family, 
the Secretary of War and his aid and myself. 

The ten months which divide the fall of Fort 
Donelson, (February 16th, 1862,) from the battle of 
Fredericksburg, (December loth, 1862,) constitute 
the depressing era of military uncertainty. Admin- 
istrative ability, executive resolution and hardihood, 
were never more impressively displayed than during 
this disheartening period, but in spite of it, incon- 
stant victory seems to vibrate between the hostile 
banners. 

The encourag-ino; results of Iuka and Corinth, and 
the opening of the Upper Mississippi, inspire the 
national heart with new confidence in the protection 
of Heaven and in the heroism of our western sol- 
diers. Brave old Farragut earns the grade of Admi- 
ral, and the soubriquet of Salamander, by leading 
his thundering Armada, through the feu d' enfer, 
which belched from Fort Phillip on the right, and 
Fort Jackson on the left, and the martial and financial 
heart of rebellion in the Southwest, is palsied when 
the guns of his fleet sweep the streets of New 
Orleans, and the Tamer of Cities hangs up its scalp 
in his wigwam. War surges and resurges over the 



44 

devoted plains of Missouri and Arkansas. The Pen- 
insula Campaign, with its chequered fortunes, alter- 
nately excites exultation and wailing, hut its 
final failure plants in the National heart the seeds of 
despair, while the whirlwind which devours the army 
of Pope, constrains us to doubt the justice of God. 
The victories of South Mountain and Antietam, 
fairly costing their weight in gore, and turning to 
ashes in our grasp, failed to reanimate our hopes, 
while Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh, are more than 
counterpoised by the heart rending butchery of 
Fredericksburg. 

The progress of Mr. Lincoln's mind from his plan 
of colonizing the slave, and after that was abandoned, 
to compensated liberation, and from this expedient 
to unconditional emancipation, is analogous to the 
deliberate advance, which I have already detailed, 
from a conservative to a thorough going policy, in 
the prosecution of the war. Unlike the first, how- 
ever, in these last transitions he meets with no 
resistence from the philanthropies of his nature, but 
encouraged and stimulated by the complete accord 
of emotion and reason. To be self-willed in a revo- 
lutionary crisis, and to exclaim "Justice shall be 
omnipotent though the Heavens fall," are unques-* 
tionably sublime manifestations, but in such immi- 
nent peril, it is rather the sublimity of madness than 



45 

of wisdom. I can not withhold my tribute of grati- 
tude and admiration, to the caution and address, 
with which Mr. Lincoln has felt his way, timeing his 
march to the beat of the popular heart, and answer- 
ing no requisitions of the popular will until it was 
thoroughly mature and unmistakably pronounced. 
He had settled the principle upon which emancipa- 
tion is defended, and was unquestionably ripe for it 
himself, when he first resolved to exercise the bellig- 
erent rights which belonged to the Government, in 
time of war, but he was deterred from exercising 
the right of liberation, from the apprehension of a 
counter revolution in the North, and that his fears 
were not entirely groundless, that remarkable polit- 
ical revulsion, in the fall elections which immediately 
follow his preliminary proclamation, abundantly 
demonstrates. When, however, his convictions of 
the justice of emancipation were enforced, by the 
logic of continued failure, and by the incisive rea- 
soning of the enemy's unyielding sword, he was led 
up, in spite of his fears, to the height of that trans- 
cendent Edict, which constitutes his strongest claim 
upon universal and unending gratitude and remem- 
brance. He assumed the Presidential chair, with a 
solemn disavowal of any constitutional right to inter- 
fere with slavery in the States, and if they had con- 
tinued faithful to the Constitution, their cherished 



46 

barbarity, condemned as it was by all his moral 
instincts, would have been safe in the inviolable 
sanctity of his oath. But when they appealed to 
War, and voluntarily renounced the safeguards of 
the Constitution, they instantly handed over the 
abhorrence of civilization to uncovenanted mercy, 
and disengaged two belligerent rights, one of which 
is fatal to it, if slaves are chattels, and the other fatal 
if slaves are mm. By the most meliorated construc- 
tion of the international code, the private property 
of an enemy on the land is still liable to capture, 
under circumstances constituting a necessity, of which 
the conqueror is the sole judge ; while the old and 
austere authority of Vattel establishes the indisputa- 
ble right in one belligerent, to break the chains of 
any oppressed people which the other belligerent is 
depriving of liberty, for the purpose of completing 
and ennobling victory. Of these weapons, Mr. Lin- 
coln chose the first, which is- called military neces- 
sity. The conditional proclamation was for some 
time postponed, awaiting the impending engagement 
in Maryland, and was finally promulged only five 
days after Antietam. Mr. Lincoln required that the 
military urgency upon which it was based, should 
not only be plausible, but real and imperious, and 
it is now well understood that if victory had perched 
more signally on our banners, and Lee's army had 



47 

been more thoroughly crippled and demoralized in 
that battle, the proclamation which restores to mil- 
lions of living men, and to unborn generations, the 
rights of manhood, would have been postponed to 
an indefinite future. 

Are we not here able to interpret and explain one 
of those purposes which are sometimes called mys- 
terious and inscrutable ? I can almost see a mighty 
arm, stretching out of the unfathomable blue, hasten- 
ing the fugitive in his flight, holding back the feet 
of the pursuer, and arresting the waves of destruc- 
tion which are pouring upon the dismayed and 
broken ranks, that the abyss which is yawning for 
the mightiest of slavery's hosts, -may not swallow up 
the elect of liberty and the redemption of a long 
suffering race. Assembled here, to-day, to devoutly 
recognize that Providence, which guided the great 
liberator, " by ways which he knew not and by paths 
which were not known," may we not all of us, with- 
out a discordant voice, and with the hope that his own 
ransomed spirit is not unconscious of the oblation, 
unite in the invocation which closes the imperisha- 
ble manifesto, "Upon this act, believed to be an act 

OF JUSTICE WARRANTED BY THE CONSTITUTION UPON MILI- 
TARY NECESSITY, I INVOKE THE CONSIDERATE JUDGMENT OF 
MANKIND AND THE GRACIOUS FAVOR OF ALMIGHTY God." 

The definitive proclamation of emancipation was 



48 

promulged on the first of January, 1863, and it 
seems instantly to have been visited with that " gra- 
cious favor" which it so reverently implores. From 
that eventful elate Federal ascendency flows surely 
and steadily on to the capture of Richmond and the 
surrender of Lee. Reverses and checks, it is true, 
intervene, bat they are only eddies in the Amazon. 
During these twenty-seven controlling months of the 
war, into which more general engagements were 
crowded, than into any equal period of the world's 
history, the loss of but one, attests the advent of 
higher inspiration and divine re-enforcement to our 
struggling cause. The ink with which the procla- 
mation is written is scarcely dry upon the parch- 
ment, before the decisive victory of Murfreesboro 
expels invasion from imperiled Tennessee. On 
the nation's birthday which next follows it, pro- 
pitious heaven almost visibly intervened, by break- 
ing the last barrier which prevents the loyal father 
of waters, from flowing free and unobstructed 
through the divided rebellion; and by sweeping 
back, from the bristling hills of Gettysburg, the 
army of the alien on its last desperate raid into the 
bosom of the North. Away up in mid air, on the 
cloud capped crests of the south-eastern Alleghanies, 
there is the roar and lurid flame of battle, as if the 
pent up fires of the cavernous earth were bursting 



49 

from their thunder-riven summits, while down, down 
in the deep valley, it seems as if the elements of 
nature were battering chasms and pathways through 
their granite foundations. The gates of Georgia 
yield to the flushed battalions of the Cumberland, 
and from the Altamaha to the Cape Fear, three 
great states of the Confederacy soon " feel the vic- 
tor's tread and know the conquered knee." Hood is 
hurled, by his infatuated Chieftain, against the bat- 
tlements of Nashville only to be dashed back broken 
and destroyed. The vale of the Shenandoah is 
swept by the besom, and scourged by the wrath of 
Sheridan. Over the forest which sweeps from the 
Eapidan to the James, there hangs, in early Spring 
time, a dark and portentous cloud ; the Wilderness 
is red as if untimely Autumn had purpled its foliage. 
We dimly hear, far in its resounding depths, that 
awe-inspiring roll, that sharp suggestive rattle which 
forewarns and terrifies nations, and ever and anon a 
woe-begone messenger, such as 

" Drew Priam's curtain at the dead of night 
And told him half his Troy was burned" — 

breaks from the sequestered thicket, with a tantali- 
zing tale, of the fierce, sanguinary, but indecisive 
shock and recoil of embattled hosts. What weeks of 
heart-rending suspense ! But finally, from the Sat- 
urnalia of death and butchery long rampant in its 
4 



' 50 

sombre and haunted" recesses, he of the iron will and 
inflexible tenacity, at length emerges in the resplen- 
dent robes of Victory, and day after day for persist- 
ent months, unmoved by clamor, undismayed by 
failure, unwearied by resistance, slowly tightens an 
irresistible coil, round the wailing Capital of sin, 
until faint and gasping, it Mis into the arms of a 
negro brigade. City after city, harbor after harbor 
succumbs. The coast is hermetically sealed from 
Norfolk to Galveston, and the magazines and arsenals 
of England and France no longer pour their strength- 
ening tides into the decaying veins of the worn out 
Confederacy. Sheridan rolls up the Confederate 
right like a scroll and hangs on its flying flank with 
the scent of a hound and the snap of a terrier. Lee 
surrenders his decimated horde, and over the old 
endeared, precious inheritance from the Eappahan- 
nock to the Sabine, up flies the banner, down droops 
the rag. 

Abraham Lincoln's work was finished, when unher- 
alded and almost unattended, leading his little son 
by the hand, he walks into the streets of humiliated 
Richmond. If upon that auspicious morn, the crown- 
ing benediction had descended upon him, he might 
have well wished to die. What more caulcl he ask 
for on earth? Assailed by the strongest conspiracy 



51 

that ever threatened a nation's life, after a four years' 
struggle, his triumph over it was complete and over- 
whelming, conquering liberty for a class and national 
existence for a people. Was not this honor enough 
for one man ? He had survived ridicule, he had out- 
lived detraction and abuse, he had secured the com- 
mendation of the world for purity of purpose, con- 
stancy in disaster, clemency in triumph, and the 
praise even of his armed foes, for gentleness and 
mercy. In times more troubled, he had administered 
Government with more ability than Cavour, and War 
with more success than Napoleon the Third. He 
had paled the glory of Hastings in preserving an 
empire, and had earned comparison with Hampden 
for self-command and rectitude of intention, while as 
the emancipator of a race*, he stood alone in solitary 
glory, without a rival and without a parallel. If 
fame had approached him with the laurels of a con- 
queror, if power had offered him a sceptre, and 
ambition a crown, he would have scorned them all. 
He asked from man, he asked' from God but one 
culminating boon, peace, peace on the bloody waters 
and the blighted shore. 

Alas! such an enviable consummation to his career 
was denied. There are mysterious conferences of 
suspicious and guilt-laden men, ominous Sittings of a 
bat-like flock from Washington to Richmond, and 



52 

from Richmond to Canada, midnight interviews, lurk- 
ing spies, correspondence in cypher; a conspiracy 
against his life has long been maturing, in minds 
capable of such things, and finally the clay is named, 
the place is appointed, and the parts of the bloody 
drama all distributed. On the evening; of the 14th 
of April, 1865, at Ford's theatre in the City of Wash- 
ington, the trigger of a pistol is pulled. by a sneaking 
murderer who had crept up behind him all unwarned 
and the report resounds through the startled assem- 
bly. From the private box which the President was 
known to occupy, an excited wretch, with a swart 
visage torn and convulsed by every passion, leaps 
upon the stage where he had last played the blood- 
thirsty Apostate, and brandishing a dagger in his 
outstretched hand, and exclaiming " sic semper tyran- 
nis," vanished into night and darkness, leaving behind 
him horror, terror and woe. The nation stands 
aghast ! the crime of the Dark Ages has entered our 
History — stealthy assassination has broken the sacred 
succession of the people's anointed — the life of the 
best beloved of Presidents is oozing from a murder- 
ous wound — the soul of Abraham Lincoln is trans- 
ferred from Earth to Heaven. 

Whether the Confederate Government is legally 
guilty of Mr. Lincoln's murder, is a question yet to 
be determined, but of one thing we are sure, that 



£Q 



00 

no crime is, too' bad, too bold, too infamous, too exe- 
crable, for that state of society which was willing to 
unchain the fiends of war, to incarnadine sea and 
land, to immolate a Republic that is to the victims 
of misgovernment the only pledge of ransom, and 
to the victimizer the only warrant of retribution, to 
bore into Pandemonium itself and surge this conse- 
crated earth with its sulphurous seas of flame, that 
it might continue to batten forever on slavery, and 
perpetuate eternally "such abominations as are 
buried under the waters of the Dead Sea." Assas- 
sination belongs to the same ruffian family of crime 
in which that society exulted previous to the war, and 
to the same degree of infernal turpitude with those 
which it had encouraged and applauded, during its 
prosecution. Without compunction or hesitation, it 
could coolly plot to pile hecatomb upon hecatomb of 
victims, infancy and age, guilt and innocence, in one 
smouldering heap, by the midnight conflagration of 
our crowded metropolis. It could stealthily conduct 
the infection of a devouring pestilence, as electricity 
by the wires, into the healthy atmosphere of the 
North, that all who breathed it might die. It could 
deliberately compose the fiendish plan, and day after 
day, hour after hour, composedly weigh and measure 
out to helpless prisoners, the precise ration which 
was sure to produce their slow starvation. What a 



54 • 

burlesque to see such a society shrink back affrighted 
and horror struck, at shooting one Abolitionist in 
the head and stabbing another in the heart ! In the 
name of Christianity it justifies Human Bondage, in 
the name of the Constitution it justifies its over- 
throw, in the name of Chivalry it justifies the' 
Bloodhound and the Barracoon, why not in the 
name of Patriotism justify Assassination, and ap- 
prove and ratify the hired murderer's lying epi- 
taph upon himself when with the price of blood in 
his pocket he says, "tell my mother I died for my 
country." What a record of lawlessness and infamy 
has slavery written for itself from Mr. Lincoln's elec- 
tion to his death ! Appealing to the Ballot, it 
abjures the verdict of the people, appealing to Pub- 
lic Opinion, it defies th*e decree of the civilized world, 
appealing to Arms, it tramples on the Code of War 
and summons Starvation, the Torch, and the Plague, 
to aid the impotency of its sword. Too wicked to 
live in peace, too weak to succeed in war, too enraged 
to accept defeat, too corrupt to die with honor, too 
putrid to rise again, it gathers up its expiring strength 
to strike an assassin's blow that it misjht die as it had 
lived, violating every law, human and divine, and 
accursed by God and man. 

"Useless, useless," said the dying Thug, as his 
shrieking ghost fled from the angry earth to the 



55 

vengeful skies. Yes, }'es, crime always fails in its 
purpose, assassination is everlastingly a blunder. 
Caesar is assassinated, and imperial sway emerges in 
full armed despotism from his tomb — Henry the 
Fourth is assassinated, but the edict of Nantes sur- 
vives for nearly a century the dagger of Ravaillac, 
and religious toleration is invigorated by its blow — 
William the Silent is assassinated, but the republic of 
• the Netherlands breaks the double fetters of super- 
stition and tyranny, and expands into a great and 
flourishing commonwealth — Buckingham is assassin- 
ated, but Protestant Eochelle is soon delivered up to 
the vengeance of Richelieu — -Capo DTstria is assas- 
sinated, but the European dynasties control the 
policy and elect the kings of Greece — Lincoln is 
assassinated, but the branded confederacy cowers 
beneath the maledictions of the civilized world, and 
onward, onward, roll the mighty wheels of victory 
and vengeance. "Useless," and diclst thou dream, 
impious malefactor, that it was in the power of thy 
puny arm to reach the great life of our virtuous 
deliverer ? He lives ! he lives ! he lives to-day, in 
his imperishable example, in his recorded words of 
wisdom, in his great maxims of liberty and enfran- 
chisement. The good never die ; to them belongs a 
double immortality, they perish not upon the earth, 
and they exist forever in heaven. The good of the 



56 

present live in the future, as the good of the past are 
here with us and in us to-day. The great primeval 
law-giver, entombed for forty centuries in that un- 
known grave, in an obscure vale of Moab, to-day 
legislates in your halls of State, and preaches on 
your Sabbath in all your synagogues. Salem's royal 
singer indites our liturgies and leads our worship. 
Socrates questions Atheists in these streets. Phidias 
sculptures the friezes of Christian temples — the 
desecrated tongue of mangled Tully arraigns our 
Catalines — against the Philip of to-day the dead 
Demosthenes thunders — the dead Leonidas guards 
the gates of every empire which wrestles for its 
sovereignty — the dead Justinian issues in your courts 
the living mandates of the law — the dead Martin 
Luther issues from your press the living oracles of 
God — the dead Napoleon still sways France from 
that silent throne in the Invalides — the dead George 
Washington held together through wrangling decades 
this brotherhood of States, and the dead Abraham 
Lincoln will peal the clarion of beleaguered nations 
and marshal and beckon on the wavering battle line 
of liberty, till the last generation of man— 

" Shall creation's death behold 
As Adam saw her prime." 

His fame will grow brighter and grander, as it 
descends the ages, and posterity will regard him as 



57 

the incarnation of democracy, in its pure childhood, 
as the embodiment of those ideas of universal eman- 
cipation, which were the glory of its youthful epoch. 
In remote futurity, as far removed from us as we are 
from the Chaldeans, when the massive walls of our 
Capitol shall no more exist than the palace of Neb- 
uchadnezzar, and all that is mortal in our civiliza- 
tion and polity shall live only in memory, and when 
the ingenuous child, gazing adown the dark infinity 
of time, will be obliged to ask "where is the nine- 
teenth century?" "There, there," the sage will reply, 
" where you see that full orbed and splendid Hesperus 
of the West." When the race shall have finally 
climbed to the lofty table land of universal brother- 
hood, to which it is inevitably destined by the para- 
mount law of its own development, and shall turn 
backward its wistful eyes for those who have led its 
weary pilgrimage, through passes the most perilous, 
and over wastes the most disheartening, they will 
instinctively seek the uncourtly figure of that forest 
born liberator, who, by one glorious edict restored to 
humanity all the divine equalities enfeoffed upon it, 
when of one blood all the children of men were 
made, and thus incorporated into harmonious frater- 
nity all the estranged and repellant complexions of 
mankind. With reverent and grateful hearts they 
will pour their choicest frankincense at the feet, 
5 






58 

crown with unfading amaranth the brow, and by 
eulogy, statue, column and obelisk, and every aid to 
enduring remembrance, transmit to new and ever' 
rising futurities, the irradiated name of the first 
President of the regenerated Republic, that Martyr 
to Liberty and Law, whom, on this shore and border 
of Time's immensity we deplore to-day, Abraham 
Lincoln of Illinois. 



LB S '12 



